For Edwards, a Man on the Run, Time Is No Ally:

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Forum Name General Discussion: Politics
Topic subject For Edwards, a Man on the Run, Time Is No Ally: "a flat-out, hard-charging schedule"
Topic URL http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x3713515#3713515
3713515, For Edwards, a Man on the Run, Time Is No Ally: "a flat-out, hard-charging schedule"
Posted by DeepModem Mom on Tue Nov-13-07 11:04 AM

NYT: For Edwards, a Man on the Run, Time Is No Ally
By CHRISTINE HAUSER
Published: November 13, 2007


(Eric Thayer for The New York Times)
John Edwards has spent nearly 60 days in Iowa and visited all 99 counties. He attended a farm meeting Saturday in Des Moines.

Lagging in national polls less than two months before the Iowa caucus, Mr. Edwards is a man racing against the clock, hammering out miles over long stretches of countryside in a campaign that his spokesman, Mark Kornblau, says is dictated by a “flat-out, hard-charging schedule.”

With his campaign sustained by public financing, Mr. Edwards has only recently bought television time for advertising, and so has been racing from one gathering of potential voters to the next. On relentless tours in Iowa, New Hampshire and other states, the campaign is banking on Mr. Edwards to win over voters and caucusgoers in person, giving the campaign a focus that has sharpened in recent weeks as he tries to convince them he is the best choice for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Like Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, he has stepped up his criticisms of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has gained in state polls. There is urgency even in his news releases, which remind readers of the number of trips he has already made, or of the time remaining in the countdown to the caucuses. “With 53 days to go, Edwards will outline what is at stake in this election and call on all Americans to meet the moral test of this generation,” a spokesman, Eric Schultz, wrote on a recent schedule announcement.

Mr. Edwards and his staff members are exceeding his rivals in terrain and time, having rolled through all 99 counties and spent nearly 60 days in Iowa alone since late December, when he announced his candidacy. He has hit towns so off the beaten path that a Des Moines Register columnist, David Yepsen, called them places “where Democrats are ordinarily found only on endangered species lists.”

But it is not just the miles that have been hard fought. In his speeches, Mr. Edwards is equally intense, bluntly asking people to caucus for him and laying bare details of his life, like the recurrence of his wife’s cancer, that prompt forays into deeply personal territory. Some of his listeners have taken notice. In Dover, N.H., Diane Carson, 58, said she asked Mr. Edwards a question about cancer, which had killed her husband, because she felt “simpatico” with him. “One other thing absolutely blew my socks off,” Mrs. Carson said. “He locked his eyes on my eyes. He never looked away. In the end he had to go on to his agenda, and he did his thing. But he never stopped looking directly into my eyes.” “And I have seen a lot of these guys,” Mrs. Carson continued. “I have never experienced that before.”...

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/13/us/politics/13edwards.html